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 to Bulstrode Whitelocke ‘much dissatisfaction at those members who sat in the house, and at the proceedings of the general and army’ (, Memorials, ii. 477, 509, ed. 1853). For the next few years he held aloof from politics, and did not sit in the council of state. Personally, however, he remained on good terms with Cromwell, and entertained him at his house during his march from Scotland to Worcester (Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, ii. 185). He was returned to Cromwell's second parliament as member for Nottinghamshire, but did not sit. The Protector's government was very anxious to have his support, and he did not scruple to ask favours from them on behalf of his brothers, when the Marquis of Dorchester was in danger of being taxed as a delinquent, and when Francis was appointed sheriff of the county. ‘If it were my case,’ he wrote in the latter instance to Oliver St. John, ‘my Lord Protector might do what he pleased with me; my conscience would not permit me to execute that place. My brother and I do very much honour my Lord Protector, and are most desirous to do him service, but in this we cannot’ (Thurloe Papers, iv. 237, 469). A similar scruple led him to refuse the seat offered to him in Cromwell's House of Lords (, History of the Commonwealth, iv. 469). Nevertheless he is mentioned by Whitelocke as one of the little council of intimate friends with whom the Protector advised on the question of kingship and on other great affairs of state (Memorials, iv. 289). For Cromwell's son Henry he professed great attachment and admiration, and, through his friends Thurloe and St. John, exercised a great influence over the policy of Richard Cromwell's government (, Parliamentary Diary, iv. 274). There can be little doubt that Pierrepont is the mysterious friend referred to in Colonel Hutchinson's ‘Life:’ ‘as considerable and as wise a person as any was in England, who did not openly appear among Richard's adherents or counsellors, but privately advised him, and had a very honourable design of bringing the nation into freedom under this young man who was so flexible to good counsels.’ When the colonel objected that the fixing of the government in a single person would necessarily lead in the end to the restoration of the Stuarts, Pierrepont ‘gave many strong reasons why that family could not be restored without the ruin of the people's liberty and of all their champions, and thought that these carried so much force with them that it would never be attempted, even by any royalist that retained any love to his country, and that the establishing this single person would satisfy that faction, and compose all the differences, bringing in all of all parties that were men of interest and love to their country’ (Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, ii. 213). The royalist agents reported to Hyde that Thurloe governed Richard Cromwell, and St. John and Pierrepont governed Thurloe. They wished that Pierrepont were dead, and thought of trying to gain him over to the king's cause; but those who knew him best dared not approach him on the subject (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 421, 423, 425, 428, 441). After the fall of Richard Cromwell Pierrepont again retired; but on 23 Feb. 1660, after the return of the secluded members to their places in the house, he was elected to the new council of state at the head of the list (Commons' Journals, vii. 849). The suspicions of the royalists redoubled. Some reported that he was working for the restoration of Richard Cromwell (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 693). He was said to be violent against the king, and to be one of the little junto of presbyterian leaders who wished to impose on Charles II the terms which had been demanded of his father in the Newport treaty. Pierrepont himself was to hold the office of lord privy seal in the future government. When this cabal was frustrated by Monck's promptitude, Pierrepont, Thurloe, and St. John were alleged to be trying to corrupt Monck, and to persuade him to accept the sovereignty himself. ‘There are not in nature three such beasts,’ wrote Broderick to Hyde (ib. iii. 701, 703, 705, 729, 749).

In the Convention parliament Pierrepont represented Nottinghamshire. He advocated an excise, moved the rejection of the Militia Bill, spoke several times on financial subjects, and defended the right of the commons to adjourn themselves (Old Parliamentary History, xxii. 405, xxiii. 14, 18, 21, 67). According to Burnet, Pierrepont was the chief instrument in persuading the House of Commons to offer to compensate Charles II for the abolition of the court of wards by a revenue from the excise. ‘Pierrepont,’ he writes, ‘valued himself to me upon this service he did his country at a time when things were so little considered on either hand that the court did not seem to apprehend the value of what they parted with, nor the country of what they purchased’ (Own Time, i. 28, ed. 1833). He also exerted his influence to save the lives of Colonel Hutchinson and Major Lister, and moved the resolution by which the commons agreed to petition the king that Vane and Lambert, though excepted from the act of indemnity, should not be tried for their lives (Old Parlia-